


silent questions and loud yeses

by Softpouts



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Aaron is an ass, Drabble, Exy (All For The Game), M/M, Mischievous neil, Post-Canon, Sleeping andrew, idk what to tag, nicky is stressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 22:36:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20347945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Softpouts/pseuds/Softpouts
Summary: Somebody has to wake Andrew up, and naturally the cousins fight over who should take the risk until Kevin suggests Neil do it.Neil decides a little bit of fun wouldn’t hurt.





	silent questions and loud yeses

**Author's Note:**

> Always seems to be the keyword for andreil for me.

“Wake him up!”

Nicky whisper-shouts from two seats ahead, Neil assumes. He has his eyes closed, so his mind can only build the visuals through his developed acute sense of hearing, thanks to years on the run—Sleeping in the darkness all these restless nights next to his mother had sharpened all of his senses.

He’s been listening to the cousins argue over who should wake Andrew up for the past ten minutes or so, and if it weren’t for his amusement he would have shut them up several minutes ago.

“No.” Cuts, Aaron. 

He must be sitting in the same line of chairs as Nicky, but Aaron had always talked so flatly–distantly, so Neil could be wrong about this. Aaron could be closer to them than he thinks, but he refuses to open his eyes alas they catch him awake.

“He’s your fucking brother!” Nicky argues, straining to keep his voice low like he always does around his infuriating cousin.

“He’s your cousin.” Aaron counters coldly, and Nicky curses under his breath. 

_Asshole_ . 

“He hates me.” Nicky whines.

“He hates me too.” The blonde replies, sounding as bored as Andrew usually does, and it always raises goosebumps on Neil’s skin. How fundamentally alike the twins are, but with different wounds to mask it. 

Aaron would be stupider than Neil pegged him as if he actually believed those words.

“No, he doesn’t. And he wouldn’t hurt you!” Nicky agrees with Neil’s unspoken judgement. “Whereas he’d  love  to hurt me.” Nicky audibly shivers. Neil cringes.

“True. Just get Kevin to wake him.” Aaron suggests lamely and Nicky huffs.

Neil’s ears pick up on distant thuds and he files them as Nicky’s heavy footsteps against the bus’s floor. 

A minute later his footsteps become insistently closer.

“Kevin said to wake Neil up, and let him wake Andrew.” Nicky tells Aaron with distaste in his voice. He must have tweaked Kevin’s original words, snipped an insult or two.

“Then wake Neil up.” Aaron says in an annoyingly patronizing tone that almost got Neil prying his eyes open just to glare at the back of his blonde head.

“No way! I might as well wake the monster first since he’ll have me in a chokehold the moment I get close to his Neil.” Nicky says. 

_His Neil._

Neil isn’t sure how the timeline between “the new guy”, “Neil” and “Andrew’s Neil” spread out but he isn’t about to question it. 

Andrew’s Neil. Neil’s Andrew.

Neil has never belonged to someone.

He certainly didn’t belong to Nathan, nor his dead mother who had never met  _Neil._

He didn’t belong to himself either, not until he came to Palmetto University as Neil Josten, played alongside the foxes as Neil Josten, kissed Andrew as Neil Josten. Until Andrew had told Neil Josten to stay, and leave Nathaniel Wesninski dead in his father’s bloody cell in Baltimore. 

On the other hand, Andrew Minyard has always and will always belong to himself, as he would remind Neil whenever he spoke of Andrew as an extension of himself.

_We._

_Us._

_This. _

All those words that Neil would use to describe them—that Andrew would quickly rephrase.

_You, I._

_There is no us._

_This is nothing._

And Neil would fight for each word with hot kisses and lingering stares at night on the rooftop. With silent questions and loud yeses chanted under the covers of _their_ bed in Columbia. 

‘Always’ is another word Andrew hates. 

For a man who gambles with his life, ‘always’ didn’t mean much, Neil concluded. Always was a dangerous fantasy. 

_A pipe dream_.

But Neil isn’t a pipe dream, Neil is real.

Those kisses on the rooftop have his trail on them, have something that Andrew could only ask from him. 

Trust.

Patience.

Understanding.

Andrew belongs to himself, but Neil’s marker highlights a bit more of his skin everyday. Andrew isn’t Neil’s, but he let Neil write his name on him, anyway.

Whisper it into his wrists with soft kisses - that only he is allowed to see, write it into his head as his fingers slip through his hair - that only he can touch, moan into his mouth breathlessly, religiously - that only he can kiss.

Andrew belongs to himself, but Neil was becoming an integral part of him. A constant yes. A piece that filled itself into the empty spaces of the puzzle.

“You’re so fucking annoying, Nicky.” Aaron’s sharp hiss brings him back to reality.

“Sometimes you’re just as much of an asshole as he is, Aaron.” The cousin retaliates.

“Go fuck yourself, I don’t care.” Aaron spits out and Nicky takes this as the dead-end of their interaction.

Neil’s ears pick up on quiet movements and a change of pace in Andrew’s breathing from where he was sleeping next to him on the joint chair. 

Andrew is awake, and Neil doesn’t need his eyes to confirm that. He’d learned Andrew’s breathing pattern that first night they’ve shared a bed, something he picked up during the last days before his mother’s death. He’d trained his ears to look out for her breathing, afraid it would stop. After she died, it was hard not to let paranoia consume him.

“They’ve been fighting over who should wake you.” Neil whispers, careful not to move his lips so obviously.

Andrew only huffs, unimpressed, and Neil’s lips quirk up.

“Hey! Knock it off. Wake them up, or I’ll be leaving all of your asses behind!” Wymack threatens.

“Yes, coach...” Nicky replies seeing as Aaron won’t.

“N-neil? Neil, Uh- wake up, we’re almost there.” His voice is a lot closer than it had just been, amused by his courage, Neil decides to open his eyes to see what kind of face he was making. 

Funny. He looks funny.

“There you go!” Nicky praises, “Quick favor, wake Andrew up?” He whispers the name as if he knew that all it would take is a mutter. A faint call.

Neil learned this the night he was jolted into consciousness by screams and blood - his own.

“...Andrew?” Neil tries, but Andrew doesn’t respond. He knows Andrew is awake, but too stubborn to admit he’d been caught.

Nicky goes back to his seat, leaving Neil to the task. Giving him a thumbs up on the way. He sits in the chair opposite them so he has clear view of Andrew and Neil. Neil doesn’t miss the worried and anticipating looks Nicky was throwing their way every two minutes. 

“Andrew? I know you’re awake.” He tries again, but is only met with silence and a perfectly impassive face. Too perfect to be Andrew’s sleeping face.

That, he learned through the many nights that saw them sleeping in the same bed. Andrew’s back to the wall, and face to Neil’s. 

On those nights, Neil would study Andrew in a way he wouldn’t get away with during the latter’s wake. 

_Staring._ He would warn. 

Neil catches Nicky looking back at them for the twelfth time since he sat down on his seat, and gets an idea.

“Nicky is looking back at us.” He says, his voice laced with mischief. 

Andrew exhales and Neil recognizes his breath as approval.

“Yes or no?” He asks, smile forcing its way onto his face as he waits for an answer. 

“...yes.”

He leans a little closer to Andrew who still has his eyes closed and presses his lips lightly on the pointy cheek. He goes for it again, and again until Andrew is fed up from his little play and pulls him by the neck and kisses him.

Andrew’s kisses taste like sweet poison, shutting his senses down one by one with each tilt of his head and each stroke of his tongue. Each suck and tug that leave Neil defenseless. Bare.

“Oh my god!” Nicky expectedly exclaims and on instinct Neil pulls back a little, but Andrew’s steady hand on the back of his neck pulls him right in.

He breathes into the kiss, and swallows everything Andrew is giving him. 

But alertness ran through his veins as if it was the only vital nutrition for survival allthose years on the run, so even if his senses were yielding themselves to Andrew’s kiss, his ears still pick up on all the gasps and laughs of his teammates acutely.

Even Kevin’s silent disapproval, and the single disgusted grunt that was Aaron’s.

“Is this gonna be a thing now?” Allison asks, her tone snappish. 

“Are you kidding me? I’ve never even seen them hold hands before!” Matt whistles astonishingly, as if Andrew and Neil were a miracle unfolding right in front of his eyes. Dan only coos, and Renee only giggles knowingly. 

Andrew’s kiss lasts longer than Neil expected, and he’s sure that was a camera’s lenses shutter he just heard.

He snaps out of his daze when he feels coldness make its way into the space between him and Andrew. Andrew drops his grip and looks ahead, annoyed with his friend’s privy looks. Neil doesn’t have the willpower to look away from his side profile. 

“What?” Andrew asks threateningly and his friends force themselves to look away. 

He side-eyes Neil and decides he isn’t exempt from the empty threat.

“Staring.” He warns with a quirk of an eyebrow.

“Always.”


End file.
